


Tell me a Story

by little mouse (lcwilkie)



Category: Doctrine of Labyrinths - Sarah Monette
Genre: Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:13:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lcwilkie/pseuds/little%20mouse
Summary: A short conversation between Mildmay and Felix and what it means to be family.





	Tell me a Story

“Felix?” He asked, when I’d thought him asleep.

 

“Yes?” I asked, sitting up slightly to look over at him, lying on his back on the other side of the fire, staring at the stars.

 

I saw him open his mouth, glance at me. Tense like the fox he reminded me of when faced with a fight-or-flight scenario. Saw him curl away as he chose flight.

 

“S’ nothing.” He muttered, voice muffled by his scar and the crackling of the logs as they burned between us.

 

“Are you sure? Is your leg bothering you?” I asked. It wouldn’t be first time his leg had pained him since he agreed to come with me on this little field trip to the far side of Grimglass.

 

“It’s nothing. Forget I asked,” he responded, more forcefully. It was the tone he used when he really did want me to drop the subject, the tone that would usually drive me to push him to talk, to answer me. To push until I was furious at him for not doing what I said and he was furious at me for trying to make him do what he didn’t want to do.

 

I wanted to drop it, to respect his wishes more. To show him I respected him. I hadn’t done a good job of that in the past, but he was my brother, and deserved far better than I had treated him. And he had sounded relaxed, the way he did when he was just talking to one of his few friends. I wanted him to relax with me. To see me as a friend. To not be afraid of me.

 

Perhaps I could show him he was safe now, with me. That he could trust me not to hurt him. Hard to do, in the middle of night in the middle of nowhere, but he had made me trust him over and over again in the middle of night in the middle of nowhere, all the way across Kekropia, without even the benefit of my being sane.

 

“Alright,” I began. “But if you want to talk...” I wasn’t sure where to go from there. I was not in the habit of encouraging him to voice his opinions for most of our relationship, and while the trip to Grimglass from Esmer helped, that was only a three month journey to counter my behavior of three years.

 

“You don’t have to worry about it. I want...I want you to not have to worry about it.”

 

I peeked over at him through my lashes. At some point while I was thinking, I had sat up, and was now resting with my arms round my knees, looking down at my hands. He was stiff still, but not in a defensive way. More in the way he had when he was thinking something through, with his methodical processes, and wasn’t quite sure what the outcome would be.

 

Eventually, he rolled into his back again, and asked quickly, “Did Methony ever tell you stories?”

 

I was silent for a few moments. We never really talked about our mother. She wasn’t much of a figure in either of our lives to be worth discussion.

 

“Not really. That is, I don’t think so. She sold me when I was five, so my memories are hazy. I remember being sung to, and maybe told stories sometimes, but I don’t remember what they were. Or even if it was Methony, it could have been any of the other women.”

 

I saw him nod slowly at my response, absorbing what I’d said.

 

“Why do you ask?”  I wondered.

 

He glanced over again, quickly. “Just wondering where I get it from. The story-telling, I mean. Liking it and being good at it. It’s not like Keeper was big on bedtime stories.”

 

“Oh,” I paused. A valid question, and not a bad place to end the conversation, seeing as we were not yet angry with each other. But I did enjoy my brother’s company, and his conversation, so I continued. “I’m not sure if preferences are transferred through parental bonds. I know skills, or lack thereof, such as mathematics can be, and looks definitely are, since it is highly unlikely you and I share the same father, but looks alone would imply a shared mother,” I said with a bit of a smile, “but actual individual likes and dislikes…that seems a bit more unlikely.”

 

“Oh,” He said with a bit of a shrug. His tone of voice implied he was willing to end the conversation, but I still wasn’t quite ready to stop this flow of open communication.

 

“That said, I think it’s possible for a child to find their own preferences at a very young age. You probably found storytellers whenever you could, such as Cardenio, and other people with various literary skills, like Zephyr, just to further your own mental growth.”

 

It wasn’t often Mildmay mentioned his friends from Melusine, especially not the ones he thought I’d have some kind of problem with, which was most of them.

 

He was watching me now, propped up on one elbow, eyes guarded, but thoughtful.

 

“Kind of like how you’d go find other hocuses just to argue with them about how to work some spell? Or spend all your time in libraries, just to argue with the books? To further your own mental growth?”

 

I blinked at him in astonishment. It had never occurred to me that we might share something as basic as a love of learning, seeing as the rest of our personalities were so different.

 

“Well,” I said lightly, “statistically, there must be something we have in common besides red hair. We are brothers, after all. And it’s entirely possible you picked up language skills from Methony. She certainly spoke at least two languages, probably more, if she spent her time in a Melusine brothel after living in Troia. It would certainly fall into the same vein as family members sharing a skill for drawing, for example.”

 

I saw his eyes change, lighten, in his distinctive almost-smile. Sometimes I forgot how much family meant to him. He was willing to abandon everything he’d ever known for a brother he just met, and then continue to sacrifice for me on a nearly daily basis over the past several years.

 

“Ok,” he said, and laid back down. This time I let the conversation end; there wasn’t any more to say, and recognizing the link between us from our mother was a good place to stop. It was a pleasant reminder that we were, in fact, family. Not the way Joline and I were, when we simply wished to belong to someone, and not the way I was related to Methony, simply through blood. Mildmay and I were brothers, in the truest sense possible.

 

I looked over at him, once more before going to sleep. “Goodnight, little brother.”

 

A quick look back to me, a brief eye smile, “Goodnight, Felix.”


End file.
